July 28, 2021 (Wednesday)
Are you familiar with the term, “electronic?” It describes the world of electrons. Now, have you ever seen an electron? I’ll answer for myself: “No, I have not seen an electron.” Your answer will most likely be the same as mine. Yet we live in a world of electronics, do we not? How do we justify our belief in electrons, when we have never seen even one? Answer: evidence. The evidence of electrons at work are all around us. We have not seen one, yet we believe.
It is said that the first discovery of moving electrons was made when someone was observing a light bulb. Using crude instruments, they discovered that the bulb was not only producing light, it was also radiating electrons. (We all know that everything material is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, and their components include electrons). The light bulb was creating an electric current in the air as the electrons in the filament heated up and broke free. They were already in the materials used to make the lighting filament, which is just a piece of matter burning up, becoming “white hot” as electricity runs through it.
Well, they found the electrons shooting through the air around light bulbs (old style light bulbs still emit electrons today), and immediately began trying to figure out a way to capture and utilize them. This brought about the birth of the electronic vacuum tube, or “radio tube.” You do remember the radio tube, don’t you?
What happened to the good old tube? It got replaced with the transistor. It was a great day in the 1940’s when the small but amazing transistor was invented. It could actually conduct a small electric current that could be regulated, and could be utilized to control larger currents. Miniaturization of electronics was thus introduced.
Nowadays, when you open up your TV and look at the circuits, you won’t see many transistors, because most of them are now so tiny that millions of them can fit inside an integrated circuit, also called an “IC,” or “chip,” invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in Dallas, in 1958. These little marvels make possible the electronic world in which you now live, making everything work, from your wrist watch to your automobile.
Most of us could not possibly care any less about what has been written so far in this blog. We only want to know how to turn something on and off and which buttons to press to make the thing work, whatever it is — your camera or computer. If you are like me, you probably get frustrated trying to figure out how to follow the instructions in the users manual. By the time I figure out which buttons to press, and when trying to record a program on my TV, the program is over.
The power that makes all this stuff work is invisible, yet I know of no one who denies its existence. The evidence for the existence of the electron is all around you, everywhere you go.
evidence….existence….
Sound familiar?
We beleive in the electron because of the evidence. We believe in God for the same reason:
“..what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20 NIV).